gion between the one hundred and fourth meridian and
the Pacific. He had added a large collection of botanical,
geological, and other specimens to the national museums. He was
eager to resume explorations of routes to the Pacific, having
decided to settle his family in California--upon the Mariposa
estate, in the Sacramento Valley, which he had bought in 1847,
before the discovery of gold, seventy square miles, for $3,000, "the
only Mexican grant that covered any part of the gold regions."

Fremont's claims against the Government for expenses incurred in the
conquest and defence of California, amounted to some $700,000, which
was paid to him. Among those advocating the payment were Senators
Benton, and Dix of New York. Twenty thousand copies of Fremont's map
of Oregon and California were ordered by the Senate.

It was by no means in the role of a defeated man that he started out
upon his fourth expedition, in the fall of 1848--when the gold fever
was at its height--a venture of his own and Colonel Benton's; its
object, a route to the Pacific by way of the Rio Grande. Thirty-two
men were enlisted, picked men as before. It was a superb and costly
outfit, no less than one hundred and twenty mules. Lacking Kit
Carson for a guide, they were lost in crossing the Rocky Mountains,
every mule and horse and one-third of the men perishing from cold or
starvation. At last, as he wrote home, "the mules, huddled together
in the deep snow, froze stiff as they stood and fell over like
blocks." The freezing men recrossed the summit in retreat, some of
them driven to cannibalism. Wading through the snow to the waist,
the remnant reached the home of Kit Carson at Taos, N. M., where
Fremont reorganized the expedition, reaching the Sacramento in the
spring of 1849.

Litigation concerning his title to the Mariposa estate did not
prevent Fremont from developing its mineral and agricultural
resources. He engaged some twenty-eight Spaniards to work its gold
mines upon shares. His prospects of boundless wealth were most
flattering. The Pathfinder was now a millionaire, and in 1855 his
title to Mariposa was established by the Supreme Court. Following
his appointment in 1849 to run the boundary line between the United
States and Mexico, the political party of the Territory seeking its
admission as a free State, elected him to the United States Senate.
Many honors were bestowed upon him at this time--the medal of the
Royal Geographical Society